


Everything Changes Today (Sonny’s On His Way)

by TypicalSadWriter



Category: In the Heights - Miranda (Broadway Cast) RPF
Genre: Other, Sonny is confused, Trans Sonny de la Vega, eighth grade girls are the worst, female pronouns used until he figures himself out, someone hug him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:27:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23125471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TypicalSadWriter/pseuds/TypicalSadWriter
Summary: Sonny de la Vega figures out a lot about himself during eighth gradeORDaniela is the saving grace of Sonny de la Vega and everyone loves this dumb kid with all their hearts
Relationships: Daniela & Sonny, Graffiti Pete & Sonny, Nina Rosario & Sonny
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	Everything Changes Today (Sonny’s On His Way)

**Author's Note:**

> yes, the title is dumb  
> Jasmin is Sonny and he will be referred to under this name and she/her/hers pronouns until he figures out himself  
> he has crushes on nina and pete, but it doesn’t go beyond that (although it’s heavily implied that pete likes him back)  
> there’s a lot of talk about dysphoria (even if he doesn’t know that’s what it’s called) and general self hate/insecurity, so be careful if you struggle with such materials

“Hey, Jas!” Pete calls as he steps into the bodega. Jasmin’s eyes light up, and she whoops loudly.  
“My man! What’s up?” she cheers, setting both hands on the counter so she can push herself up and over it. Pete laughs a bit, clapping his hand in hers and pulling her in for a ‘bro hug’ once she’s steady on both feet.  
“Nothing. I missed my best friend,” he says, snapping his fingers as they pull away. Jasmin laughs, repeating the little snap.  
“Well, you’re in luck. ‘Navi is out back sorting the trash, so you can kick it with me for a while.” She jumps up on the counter, spreading her legs and reaching between them to grab a pack of Skittles. Pete reaches into it as soon as it’s open, stealing a couple. 

“So, how was your first day?” Pete asks after a few minutes. Jasmin scoffs.  
“It fucking sucked. Eighth grade girls are the meanest people on the planet,” she insists.  
Pete laughs, arching a brow, “aren’t you an eighth grade girl?”  
“Yeah, but I’m different than them.”  
“Sure you are, Mamí,” Pete teases, throwing a Skittle at her cheek. Jasmin rolls her eyes, picking it up from the counter and popping it into her mouth.  
“What about you?” she asks.  
Pete hums, looks like he’s genuinely considering it before he shrugs.  
“Not much. High school is boring, ya know?” then, after a pause, “my ex girlfriend is a guy now.”  
Jasmin’s nose scrunches up, letting out a disbelieving laugh, “Dude, what?”  
“I’m serious,” Pete says, nudging her shoulder, “changed name and everything. He says it’s called being Transgender? He’s a Transman. Apparently he figured it out over the summer.” Pete shrugs, and Jasmin frowns a little.  
She wants to ask how it all works, how this boy ‘figured it out,’ but the back door opens and Pete is handing her a five for the Skittles and ducking out of the bodega just as Usnavi comes from the back room. 

Jasmin spends a long time looking at herself in the mirror. As a thirteen year old, it’s probably expected for her to feel a little insecure, but she kind of fucking hates everything about herself. She narrows her eyes at her own reflection, like that will make things better.  
She isn’t wearing a snapback for once, frizzy hair falling around her shoulders in a curly mess. Her joggers ride a little low on her hips, but even then she can see how prominent they’re getting as her body matures. Up until she got her period just a few months ago, she had no chest to speak of, but now she can see visible lumps under her hoodie. She scowls, trying to figure out what is so wrong with the reflection looking back at her. 

“I think I’m a lesbian,” she blurts out for the empty hair salon to hear. The hands in her hair pause for a moment before they quickly resume their task of shampooing. She can hear Daniela kissing her teeth.  
“You’re not a lesbian, Mija,” she says simply, “I’ve seen the way you look at Pete.”  
Jasmin can feel her cheeks heat up, heart picking up a little. Daniela isn’t wrong. She’s been developing a little crush on the guy for a few months now.  
“Yeah, but Pete is the only guy that’s like that! I look at Nina the same way,” she reminds, voice shaking. Her eyes fly open as she’s flicked on the forehead, scowling up at Daniela.  
“Coño, that hurt!” she whines. Daniela sighs.  
“Those aren’t the only two options, Estúpida,” Daniela says. Her tone makes it sound obvious, but Jasmin finds her entire face scrunching up. She’s never heard of anything past that. You’re either gay or you’re straight...right?  
“Alright, alright, let me explain.”

Jasmin goes home that night with her head spinning and a new outlook on life.  
Bisexual.  
The term is new to her, but it makes sense. Bi is like...two. That’s what her math teacher says at least. Like a binomial. So, bisexual is like...you can like two genders. 

Pete recognises the label when she mentions it later that week. He’s reaching over the counter, tugging on a piece of her hair to see it bounce back into a neat curl (she cut it to her chin, which means the curls are tighter and none of the ends are dead yet) when she says, “Daniela thinks I’m bisexual.”  
He doesn’t ask what the term means, nor does his face carry any judgement. He just looks from her hair to her face with a raised brow.  
“Are you?”  
“Are I what?” she asks, frowning. She’s pretending to be much more focused on the book spread out in front of her.  
“Bisexual,” Pete prompts. The way he says the word makes it feel so...normal. Daniela said it was, but the underlying fear still remains. Even still, Jasmin puffs out a low breath that has her bangs bouncing up from her forehead.  
“I think I might be.” She keeps her eyes trained on the book in front of her while she waits for an answer.  
“Cool,” he says, and he sounds like he means it. Jasmin looks up from her book with a grateful little smile.  
“Cool,” she says. 

Usnavi takes the news pretty well. He pats her on the shoulder and says that he’s proud of her for being able to tell him. Claudia cries a little, but she assures Jasmine that it’s for the very same reason.  
After those two, telling everyone is easy. Even Nina, who makes Jasmin feel like she’s going to projectile vomit. Nina even adds a quiet, “me too,” which makes Jasmin’s heart soar. 

Jasmin hates locker rooms. She hates the way she has to show her body to the other girls. She hates that they seem to stare right into her very soul every time she takes her hoodie off.  
She feels awkward existing in the world of pre-teen girls, feeling very much like she doesn’t belong. Nina says it’s normal to feel like you don’t fit it. Jasmin doesn’t feel normal at all. 

The other girls talk about their bodies a lot. As she digs in her locker for her gym clothes, she hears them gossip about who has bigger boobs or a bigger butt. She hears them compare lip sizes, hair length, the paint on their acrylic nails.  
Sometimes, they’ll try to include her in their conversations. She feels like even more of a freak then, because she doesn’t want what she has despite the way they all say they’re jealous of her. 

She stands in front of the mirror in a dress. Her knees are ashy and torn to shreds from skateboarding with Pete. She looks awkward. Her legs are gangly and she holds her shoulders too stiff. The material rubs against her skin like a brillo pad.  
She tugs the skirt down some, but that doesn’t really seem to be the problem.  
Nina is having a dinner tonight; she got accepted into her dream college. Jasmin wants to be excited for her, really. All she can think about is the stupid dress, though.  
She shuffles over to her bed, pawing around until she finds her Miami Heat snapback that got lost in the sheets as soon as she got home and tossed it. She returns to the mirror after it’s settled on her head. Her nose scrunches up. It still...Looks wrong. She reaches up, tucking her hair up into the cap slowly. It...Well, it actually looks better. The dress is still awful, but her face doesn’t look quite so...round. She groans, shaking the hat off. She can’t wear it to Nina’s dinner. Usnavi would kill her.  
She groans, scrubbing her hands over her face. She can’t just skip the dinner all together. This is Nina! She drops her hands, glaring at her reflection.  
“Fuck you,” she whispers, popping her gum as if to add to her point. Then, she pauses. When she was very little, she got gum caught in the very bottom of her hair. It was awful, and Usnavi ended up having to take her to get it cut to her shoulders. She reaches into her mouth, slowly grabbing the wad of sugar. It feels disgusting to actually press it into her hair, but she deems it at a high enough spot to justify a chop.  
She sheds the dress with a quiet ‘whoop,’ trading it out for a pair of jeans and a button up (still formal, she thinks, she can just tell Usnavi the dress didn’t fit.) 

“I can’t believe you. How did you even do this?” Daniela asks when Jasmin shows up to the salon with crocodile tears in her eyes.  
“I fell asleep with the gum in my mouth and it must have fallen out and I rolled onto it or something! I woke up and it was there,” Jasmin says, doing her very best to act upset with this series of events. Daniela sighs and Jasmin watches in the mirror as she lifts up sections of her hair.  
“We can probably get this out if you don’t-“  
“Cut it. Please,” Jasmin says, hands squeezing into fists where they rest under the bib. Daniela stares at her in the mirror for a second before saying, “okay,” and grabbing the clippers.  
She makes Jasmin sweep up the hair afterwards (chewed gum and all) and she can’t even be upset.

Usnavi freaks out a little when he sees her. Her hair is the same length as his now. He gets over it with a smack to the back of the head via Claudia, who kisses the top of Jasmin’s head and says, “you look amazing, mi amor.” 

Pete whistles when he sees it the next day. She looks up from her homework with wide eyes, looking around for any sign of Usnavi.  
“He’s at the salon. Speaking of, I heard you cut your hair. You look fucking cool,” Pete praises. Jasmin smiles, rolling his eyes.  
“I look like Usnavi.”  
“Sure, sure. If Usnavi was cool.”  
Jasmin laughs, throwing her pencil at Pete. 

She looks like Usnavi.  
The phrase rolls around in her head that night, keeping her awake and staring at her ceiling for hours.  
She...doesn’t hate the sound of that.  
She rolls out of bed, clicking on her bedside lamp before making her way to her mirror.  
Maybe she wants to look like Usnavi...

“I think I’m a boy,” she blurts out into the quiet of the salon. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter, like that might save her from whatever Daniela might say.  
Daniela’s fingers pause in her hair, the water running loudly just behind her head. After a moment, one hand leaves and turns the tap off.  
“What did you say?” Daniela asks. She doesn’t sound upset. When Jasmin forces herself to open her eyes, she doesn’t look upset either.  
She squeezes her eyes shut again before repeating herself, “I think I’m a boy.”

It’s silent for a long, long minute. Jasmin spends the entire minute thinking about the millions of ways Daniela will kick her out of the salon and say she isn’t welcomed back.  
Instead, Daniela says, “I guess we should pick a new name for you, Mijo,” and the water turns back on. If some tears fall into the drain while her hair is rinsed out, then that’s her business.

Claudia is the second one to be told. He asks her for a hug and cries into her chest when he spills out the truth he’s been sitting on for most of his eighth grade year. She pets his hair carefully and whispers, “I already knew. Deep, deep down. Thank you for telling me.” He cries a little harder, then.

Usnavi is next. He has a brief moment of panic, but then he forces himself to take a deep breath and admit that he already knew. Usnavi takes him shopping that weekend and he feels a little more complete. 

“Usnavi Junior,” Pete suggests. They’re standing in an alley, a small fire roaring in the trash can in front of them; the dress.  
“Fuck no,” he says, laughing and hitting at the older boy.  
“Fine, fine!” Pete holds up his hands in surrender. 

“Diego.”  
“Like Dora’s boyfriend?”  
“I think they’re cousins,” Pete says, face scrunching up. That earns a gag.

“Carlos.”  
“Absolutely not.”  
“The less cool Pete.”  
“Not even close.”

They go silent for a while after that. The fire is dying down when Pete finally says, “Sonny?” It’s softer this time, a more genuine suggestion. Sonny watches as the last of the dress turns to ash, lips stretching into a smile.  
“Sonny.”

**Author's Note:**

> hey! thank you so much for reading! As usual, please feel free to leave a comment with any tips on how to improve my writing, your thoughts in general, or corrections on grammar or spelling as english was NOT my first language and i highkey struggle sometimes.  
> this is what i’m doing instead of finishing my it series whoops


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